RE: [stella] One Bit Sound?

Subject: RE: [stella] One Bit Sound?
From: "Robert Blazewicz" <blaze@xxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 17:00:30 -0500
Chris,

Correction, I mentioned GTI when I ment GCC (General Computing Corp.)

Regarding "the bunker", VideoGuide is a spin off of GCC and both are in the
same building complex.  Doug Macare is one of the owners of the complex and
I know least one other building owner is (upstairs) at GCC.  So the bunker
is some structure in the woods and across a small river from the main
building complex.

Other stories:

Jacques, was telling me that when they were building Track and Field they
did not have a good idea what the controller should be like.  One the
developers suggested calling a friend that was nearly out of CalTech.  In
this one phone call this guy designed the controller.  (Having been
impressed, GCC did hire him when he graduated.)

I know Doug wrote the Atari Magic Cube.

Doug is well known for his programming tricks.  In Pole Position he uses the
ball to draw the sides of the road.  At some points the two sides of the
road come together to a single point.  He told me that after drawing the
first ball that he resets the unit (details fuzzy, I'll have to ask again)
and the cpu resumes in the middle of another instruction and draws both
balls at the same point in the middle of the screen.

It is neat hearing how Doug's team discovered that you can display a sprite
multiple times and how they first used that in Galaxian.

--Blaze

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Wilkson [mailto:ecwilkso@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: Thursday, February 18, 1999 4:34 PM
> To: Robert Blazewicz
> Cc: stella@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: [stella] One Bit Sound?
>
>
> > I'll ask more about the POKEY project here at work.  Several
> people have are
> > closely related to the 2600 and 7800.  I only know snippets of their
> > backgrounds.  The CEO, Doug Macare, designed Ms Pac Man (arcade), Pole
> > Position (2600), designed and lead the 7800 project.  The VP,
> Jacques Hugon,
> > did the kernel for Pole Position II (7800) and managed other
> projects like
> > Desert Falcon, and the POKEY chip in Ballblazer.  I think Tom
> Westberg did
> > ASIC designs for various arcade games (like Ms Pac Man, 2600,
> 7800).  One or
> > two other people here have similar background.
>
> Wow.  That's quite a group!  It's always cool to have guys like
> that around
> work.  I used to work with a 63 year old sys admin name Bruce Hunter.  Man
> he had some cool stories!  Like how Unix and the C language were
> both written
> so the engineers at Bell Labs could play a game simliar to Space
> Invaders...
>
> > I did ask Doug, Jacques, and Tom about the 7800 encryption
> code.  They said
> > that the author is dead and if any hardcopies from the 2600 design still
> > exist they may be in a place called the bunker.  It is a
> building out back
> > that is stuffed with old GTI project stuff.
>
> Heh.  I've heard of "the bunker" before.  I wondered where this
> legend came
> from.  I'd sure like to go dig through there sometime!! :)
>
> Let me know if you manage to turn anything up!
>
> -Chris
>
>
>


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